A Second Chance at Love
by Friday's Dusk
Summary: Edward's wife left him to raise their child alone. He's still alone three years later. Can he ever find someone who will accept him with a child. And if he does, what happens when his ex comes back wanting to be part of her daughter's life again.


-SORRY! Have had to delete and repost this because I made a slight mistake which I doubt anyone will even notice but I called Lindsey, Lindsey Marie Cullen and that should have been Masen. I know it doesn't seem like much but it is vital to the story that Edward's surname is Masen and not Cullen-

Ok so this has been playing round in my head for a few days and I've given up trying to fight it and have endeavoured to commit it to paper (well type but that sounds better) before the monologue dries up, as is usually inevitable whenever I begin to write. Those of you who have read some of my other stuff will probably hate me for this and will be thinking 'if you've got time to write this why can't you seem to update the stories you've already started' and I must offer great apologies I am terrible when it comes to updating and my only real excuse is I've been on a bit of an 'all-human' kick recently and it's rather hard to get back into the frame of mind write vampire stories. Hence the creation of this; my first all-human fic. Anyway this has been a very long author's note for which I apologise. All I really wanted to say was this is the first time I've tried something like this so if it's really atrocious don't be too harsh as I'm entering uncharted territory. So yeah I really hope you like this and I would appreciate any comments or feedback once you've finished reading.

SD

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**PROLOGUE (part 1)**

[and before you say, yes I know the point of a prologue is it's a short chapter that shows either a past event or a dramatic one to come but mine is long and has two parts because I am awesome like that]

EPOV

I sighed as I turned off the main road into the residential street and my house came into view. My house. When I bought it, it had been my home, it was supposed to be home and I wasn't entirely sure when it had stopped being just that. But it had. The beautiful building, perfectly situated in a quiet street had seemed to be a dream come true once, but then my life had been like a dream back then too. It was the place I had imagined my children growing up in, where my wife and I would grow old together.

Maybe that was the problem. My wife and I. It had been perfect for us but we weren't 'us' any more, we hadn't been for a long time. Everything had changed. And now the woman that I had planned to spend my life with, the mother of my child, was someone I didn't recognise any more.

As a teenager I had often imagined what my future held but I had never thought a time would come where I would dread the time when I would leave work and have to return to my partner. Sometimes I think that if I didn't have Lindsey, my adorable 2 year old daughter, waiting for me, I would simply start working double shifts, extra hours, even get a second job just to avoid spending time with the woman I was supposed to love.

My wife. I tried to think of her like that as much as I could rather than using her actually name. Where the sound of her name had once called up such positive emotions in me, now when I heard it all I could conjure up was a mild regret. So I constantly reminded myself that she was my wife; that we had made a commitment to each other that was not to be broken lightly. The word carried the connotations of love and devotion that I was supposed to feel, that I had been trying for so long now to convince myself that I felt. But part of me felt that no good could come of avoiding our issues; that maybe the time had come to face them, possibly to end this once and for all.

I pulled up on the driveway and slowly edged my way to the door, wishing there were some way to delay the inevitable. In truth I shouldn't still be here. We both knew that this relationship had been over years ago yet we hadn't quiet got to the point of admitting defeat when we discovered we were expecting Lindsey, the result of an attempt to reconcile us a fortnight earlier.

For a short while I had hoped that a baby might bring us together once more yet that hope had been short lived. Though it had never been voiced I was convinced that my wife had never really wanted the baby; that if I hadn't been so adamant that an abortion was not an option, I could never have lived with myself knowing I had allowed my child's life to be ended, that she would have had a termination.

As I entered the house I was greeted by the sound of Lindsey crying and her mother's frantic efforts to calm her. I walked into the family room; a rather ironic title for it considering there was nothing about us that could be considered a family; to see her holding our screaming child away from her like she was a bomb, with a vaguely repulsed expression on her face that made my blood boil. As soon as Lindsey spotted me she held out her arms for me and began struggling to get out of her mother's grip.

"**Oh thank goodness your back. She won't be quiet and I don't know what to do, she just won't stop crying"**

She strode over to me and unceremoniously dumped Lindsey in my arms as if she was something unclean that she couldn't wait to get away from.

I carefully adjust the toddler in my arms so she was balancing on my hip and gently rubbed her back in an attempted to calm her. Lindsey stopped crying almost immediately and cuddled herself into me, burying her face into my neck. I turned to look at my wife who expression was now contemptuous.

"**Maybe you would have some idea of how to care for her if you'd paid some attention to her once in a while."**

I wasn't entirely sure what made me say it. I usual just skirted round any issues I had which her attitude and the things she said, but something seemed to have clicked in my mind and I suddenly felt that it was time to stop hiding my feelings and confront her.

"**I have paid attention. How dare you say I haven't?"**

"**Really. You've paid attention. Who was the one who got up every night when she cried after she was born? I did. Who feeds her? I do. Who takes her to the park? I do. You can't stand there and complain that you nothing about her when it was you who never took the time to get to know her."**

"**It's not like I haven't tried,"** she was shouting now and I felt Lindsey hug herself tighter to me.** "I can't help the fact that every time I come near her she starts wailing at me."**

I was trying desperately not to lose my temper but it was getting harder. The foreboding I had been feeling for the past few weeks had been leading up to this, I was sure of it. This conversation, or argument as it was turning out to be, would decide the fate of our relationship. That should bother me but I found I didn't really care either way.

"**That's because she barely knows you. You've done nothing but avoid her as much as you can since she was born that you're practically a stranger to her. She sees more of my siblings than she does of you and they live across the city while you live in the same house. She comes crying to you and you ignore her, leave me to deal with her. All she wants is to be loved by her mom and you seem to be incapable of that."**

"**Well I'm sorry I don't know how to be a perfect mother. God Edward, I never wanted a child at 19. I had a life ahead of me, and it ruined that."**

"_**We**_** had a life. Us. You and me together. That was the plan. Yeah it was a little sooner than we had planned but having children, that was something we both wanted."**

"**Oh face it Edward. We were over a while before I got pregnant, but neither of us wanted to admit it."**

I didn't know what to say back to that. It was the truth after all. We had both been together for so long neither of us knew how to be apart so we just stayed together. It was easier than dealing with everything. Not to mention we were both proud and stubborn and didn't want to admit that everyone had been right about us. That we were too young to be truly in love, that it was too soon to be sure of how we felt about each other.

We lapsed into silence for a few moments, and when she spoke again I could see in her eyes that she had made her decision. The one that had been a long time coming.

"**I'm not doing this anymore. I can't stay here with you another second. I'm leaving and I want a divorce. God, I don't know why I'm even still here. We should never have stayed together this long."**

I didn't say anything, which clearly annoyed her, I could see she was hoping to provoke some kind of response but I was incapable of retaliation at this point. Because just as I'd expected, I didn't feel a thing. In fact I felt almost relieved, as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Because I knew she was right. This should have ended years ago.

At my lack of a comeback of any kind, she began to make her way passed me, toward the bedroom most likely to start packing, if she hadn't already, it wouldn't have surprised me, but a terrible thought occurred to me and I whipped round to face her once more.

"**What about Lindsey."**

My arms tightened automatically around the figure of the child who was somehow now sleeping in my arms despite the commotion. My daughter. My beautiful Lindsey Marie Masen, the one single ray of light in my otherwise gloomy existence. I couldn't bear to lose her and even though I was undoubtedly the more committed parent, if it came to a custody battle, the courts were likely to side with the mother over the father and my darling wife had enough animosity towards me to deny me access to her if that were to occur.

"**What about her?"** She had stopped near the door to the bedroom, but didn't turn to face me and her voice was flat and monotone.

"**Who's going to have primary custody?"** I couldn't stop my voice from shaking with fear as I asked the question to which I dreaded the answer.

"**You, obviously. I don't want anything to do with her."**

Her reply rendered me speechless once more. I didn't want to lose Lindsey but I didn't want her to be without her mother either. True she hadn't shown herself to be much of a mother towards her so far but without the constant tension between us she would be there for Lindsey so much more.

"**WHAT? You can't just abandon her."**

"**I'm not. She has you."**

"**Yeah, and she always will, but she needs her mother. Whatever issues we have are between us they have no bearing on her."**

However much I had prepared for an impending end to our relationship, I had never thought she would feel that way, about her child, her own flesh and blood. It wasn't fair for her to blame this on a defenceless child who had done nothing wrong.

"**I don't care. I'm leaving. I want out. I want out of this life, this family. I don't want anything to do with the last 7 years since I met you. And that includes her."** She was facing me by this point and she gestured causally at the adorable creature in my arms as if she was nothing. As her gaze fell on the sleeping child there was no love in her eyes, no sign of any attachment or affection at all.

"**How can you possibly feel that way? This is your child, not some pet we got together. Your daughter. DOESN'T THAT MEAN ANYTHING TO YOU?"**

"**WELL I NEVER WANTED THE BRAT IN THE FIRST PLACE" **she screeched at me and I froze.

I had always known that she had been unsure about the pregnancy, hell I had been terrified when I found out she was pregnant. Children had always been something I had assumed would happen one day but at the time I was 19. But it hadn't mattered. It was completely unplanned and much earlier in life than I had expected but that didn't change anything. We loved each other, or I thought we did at the time, and we had discussed having kids together one-day. So even though I knew she was concerned about having a child so young _during_ the pregnancy just as I was, things had got better in the later months and after the birth so I had assumed that she had come around to the idea once she had got used to it. She had never said anything to the contrary.

But looking at her face now I could tell that she resented Lindsey, that she resented me for making her have her. Not that I had pushed her into it but she knew my feelings on the subject on abortion

"**HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT? YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT YOUR CHILD."** My attempts to conceal my anger had been abandoned in light of her confession.

"**I DON'T CARE. I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE. I CAN'T STAND BEING HERE. I CAN'T STAND BEING WITH YOU. I HATE YOU. AND AS FOR THAT THING. IT IS NOT MY CHILD. AS FAR AS I'M CONCERNED I DON'T HAVE A CHILD."**

We had unconsciously gotten closer during the course of our heated discussion and she was practically up in my face as she screamed exactly what I expected she had been not-saying for years now. And I snapped. Before I could even consider my actions I had raised my hand and slapped her across the face. I didn't mean to do it and the very next second I regretted it, I had been raised to be a gentleman and that meant never hitting a lady. But this was my daughter she was talking about. And I wasn't about to let her get away with saying that about her.

Even so, regret it I did, even though I had barely used any force at all, it was more of a light tap due to my unconscious decision to avoid too much movement so as not to wake Lindsey. I began to apologise profusely but she just treated me to a scathing look and retreated to the bedroom, slamming the door closed behind her.

We might have fallen apart but I still knew her extremely well and I could tell that she wasn't even upset that I had hit her. It was the fact that I had done it in Lindsey's defence. I knew instinctively that she didn't think as Lindsey as someone worth defending. And that was the worst thing she could possibly have in return. If she had yelled, hit me back, hell even called the cops, it wouldn't have been as bad as that; showing me the contempt she held for her daughter. No child should have to bear that. No child should be unloved by their parent. I cradled Lindsey to me and retreated to my music room. And there we stayed. I didn't move even when I heard the sounds of the bedroom door reopening and a suitcase being dragged across the floor. Not when I heard the jangling of key and the sound of metal on metal as she discarded her house-key. Not when the front door crashed shut behind her and I heard the roar of her engine as she drove out of our lives forever.

She was gone. It was just the two of us now. It didn't matter. We were better off alone.

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Aha. So there you go. The first part of the prologue. I hope to write the second part soon, I can't now since I need sleep but hopefully tomorrow after work, blerg I have a massive shift and I can't be asked. Anyway please leave me some feedback. I would definitely like your views on the slap, I thought it was a little harsh but I need it to work into the next part of the prologue because I have a plan (cue evil laugh) which I think is funny. Anyways all feedback welcome even if its criticism.

Luv ya xx ciao SD


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